The few local elected officials who responded Wednesday to an inquiry about the aftermath of the presidential election agreed Donald Trump was within his rights to pursue all available legal avenues in contesting Joe Biden’s apparent victory.

None said they expected the president to concede. But, by now, should he have accepted the outcome?

“What outcome? We don’t know what the outcome is,” said state Rep. Doug Dubitsky, the Chaplin Republican who last week won a fourth term in the 47th District, which includes part of Norwich and several rural towns to the north.

“Who’s called it? The press? The press doesn’t get to decide who the president is,” he said. “The secretaries of the states have to certify the vote. So, I don’t know if there’s even a story here. Look at Bush and Gore (in 2000). It took a lot longer than this, and you didn’t hear anybody complaining that Gore should concede. He had arguments that the vote wasn’t complete and those arguments were allowed to play out over time."

“Shouldn’t the same thing happen now?” Dubitsky asked. “Why, after one week, are we asking about reaction to the president contesting the outcome?”

Trump’s campaign has filed lawsuits challenging the voting, in some cases alleging fraud, in a number of states. So far, the claims have proved baseless, national media have reported.

“I’m not one of his lawyers, so I don’t know specifically about the merit of his legal challenges,” Dubitsky said. “He filed 200-some-odd pages in a brief today. I haven’t read it yet, and I bet most reporters haven’t either.”

Dubitsky noted that the discovery of a mistake in the counting of votes in Wallingford, a New Haven County town, could alter the outcome of the race in Connecticut’s 90th House District, where Rep. Craig Fishbein, a Republican, may yet retain his seat. On Election Day, Democrat Jim Jinks appeared to have won. An automatic recount is scheduled for Thursday.

“He has a right to challenge things in a reasonable fashion. I would not deny anybody that right,” state Sen. Cathy Osten, a Sprague Democrat, said, referring to Trump. “That being said, I think all of his challenges have so far been thrown out. I don’t know what’s left. It’s clear to me that this isn’t going to be anything other than a Joe Biden win.”

Still, Osten, who secured a fifth term in the 19th Senate District last week, said she was disappointed that the president hadn’t recognized his opponent’s victory in the way that Hillary Clinton acknowledged his — immediately — in 2016.

“It does appear Biden will be president,” Norwich’s Republican mayor, Peter Nystrom, said. “That doesn’t mean I’m supporting him. Throughout history, there have been challenges or non-acceptances of an outcome. The most important thing is that every vote be counted. If there still are votes out there, let them be counted.”

Nystrom said Trump and everyone else deserves to “get their day in court, and I think that’s what we’re seeing here.”

“This country is so fractured now, this is (minor),” he said.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com